GROW Model
The GROW model walks a coaching conversation through four questions in order - what do you want, where are you now, what could you do, what will you do - so it ends in a decision, not just insight.
Four questions sit in a line, each feeding into the next until the conversation lands on a chosen action.
Reach for this when…
- A coaching or one-to-one conversation drifts into venting with no next step.
- Someone brings you a problem and you're tempted to solve it for them.
- You need a repeatable structure for regular check-ins.
How to run it
- Goal: agree what they want from this conversation and from the bigger picture.
- Reality: get an honest read on where things actually stand, without excuses.
- Options: generate more choices than the obvious one or two.
- Will: pin down exactly what they will do, and by when.
A worked example
Situation. Camila Souza runs a small consultancy in Recife, Brazil, and a senior associate, Beatriz, kept bringing her the same client problem expecting a decision handed back.
Applied. Instead of answering, Camila ran the next conversation through GROW, deliberately spending the longest stretch on Options rather than jumping to a fix.
Result. Beatriz left with three options of her own and a date to report back, and stopped routing that account's decisions through Camila.
The catch
GROW gives a conversation shape, not good questions - a lazy coach can march through the four letters and still solve the problem for the client. It also assumes the person has real room to choose; if the goal or options are actually fixed by someone else, GROW just formalises a non-choice. Reality is the step people skip most, because an honest picture of where things stand is often the uncomfortable part.
If you're doing more talking than they are, you're not running GROW, you're consulting with steps.
Origin: Graham Alexander, Alan Fine and Sir John Whitmore